Taxi Instagrams an indie film promotion

The agency responded to a Twitter message asking for ideas to promote a Montreal film with an outdoor campaign that makes use of smartphone photography.

Sometimes Twitter can be a source for employment and new relationships, but in the case of filmmakers David La Haye and Jay Tremblay, it’s a place to intrigue a major ad agency into figuring out how to build buzz for their indie filmJ’espère que tu vas bien.

“David posted on Twitter that he had an experimental movie and didn’t have a budget to promote it,” says Nicolas Rivard, Taxi art director.

Curiosity got the best of executive creative director Dominique Trudeau, who jumped at the chance to bring the film to the agency’s creative corner.

Taxi approached Instagramers Montreal (a collective of Instagram enthusiasts who meet up on occasion to walk and photograph the streets with their smartphones) to contribute to the film promotion, which the agency did pro bono.

The promotion for the 87-minute unscripted film, which is about the journey that two friends take to Mont Royal, is relived with the Instagramers taking the same path, capturing what meets their eye, and transforming the phone photos into 87 promotional posters. Over 600 photographs were submitted and, for the next month, the chosen shots will be pinned up outside of the Excentris movie theatre in Montreal.

Rivard says the agency kept the marketing effort in the social media space as it “was used at the very beginning to find us.”

He adds: “It’s not a blockbuster, but it’s a cool idea. And we wanted something that was as spontaneous and fresh as the movie to promote it.”

The film, which was produced by La Haye’s company Aviva Communications, also has a 45-second trailer, using some additional Instagram images that weren’t used in the posters.